“This painful wait”
Liverpool’s Diaz emotionally pleads for his father’s release
November 6, 2023, 8:21 a.m
He saved the point for Liverpool FC with his late goal, but Luis Diaz’s head was somewhere else entirely. With his kidnapped father. After the game, the Colombian international made an emotional appeal to his kidnapper. Coach Jürgen Klopp supports him.
The Colombian national soccer striker Luis Diaz from Liverpool FC made an emotional appeal to his father’s kidnappers to release his father “immediately” and to finally end “this painful wait.” The 26-year-old published his request “in the name of love and “compassion” after his late goal to equalize 1-1 (0-0) in the league game against newly promoted Luton Town.
While celebrating, he pulled up his jersey and presented a shirt with the words: “Libertad para papa”, “Freedom for Papa”. He later shared via Instagram: “Our concern is growing by the minute. My mother, my brothers and I are desperate, afraid and have no words to describe what we feel.” This suffering will “only end when we have him back home.”
Diaz’s parents were abducted last weekend at a gas station in their hometown of Barrancas in northern Colombia. While the mother was freed on the same day, the father is apparently in the hands of the guerrilla group Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (National Liberation Army/ELN). On Saturday, after negotiations with the ELN, Colombia’s Interior Minister Luis Fernando Velasco said hopefully that Luis Manuel Diaz should be “released” as soon as possible. “A safe area should now be agreed upon” for the handover.
The ELN has been active in Colombia for decades and has repeatedly caused a stir with kidnappings of Colombians or foreign citizens and attacks. In 2003, the ELN also became known in Germany when they kidnapped the German tourist Reinhilt Weigel. Weigel was only released after 74 days. The Diaz kidnapping case caused great concern in the football scene. FIFA President Gianni Infantino sent “support and prayers” to the Diaz family.
Team manager Jürgen Klopp hugged Diaz after the game. “It was wonderful and emotional and fantastic,” he said of his Joker’s goal, “but it doesn’t solve the real problem.” Diaz is powerless, but the game and training distract him a little. There is encouraging news from Colombia, “but the one we all want to hear hasn’t been there yet.”